Tonight the Aggies have an opportunity to put the crowning touch on their Cinderella season, or ruin it. For most of the past forty years or so, the day leading up to the annual game between TAMU and Texas U. has been one of the most stressful days of the year for me. When I was still in grade school, my dad took me to my first Thanksgiving day game at Kyle Field. I didn't understand football back then, but I remember that Texas got some kind of lucky break near the end of the game and escaped with a close win. That was usually the pattern over the next 20 years: the longhorns getting a few lucky breaks, the longhorns winning. When I was in college, I got sick of hearing hornfans singing "poor Aggies." In the mid 1980s, there was a reversal of fortune, and the Aggies dominated the series while Texas U. wallowed in mediocrity.
Football is like politics in that the pendulum is always swinging back and forth. Around the turn of the century, Texas U. regained the upper hand and since 2000 is 8-2, with most of the longhorn wins being lopsided affairs like 50-20 or 49-9. My enthusiasm for Aggie football started to wane in the last two years of the Franchione regime, and I was able to relax during the season, especially on the day they played the longhorns. The last time TAMU won against Texas was in 2007, and while that game was being played on TV I was in a movie theater watching "No Country For Old Men" on the big screen.
Football is like politics in that the pendulum is always swinging back and forth. Around the turn of the century, Texas U. regained the upper hand and since 2000 is 8-2, with most of the longhorn wins being lopsided affairs like 50-20 or 49-9. My enthusiasm for Aggie football started to wane in the last two years of the Franchione regime, and I was able to relax during the season, especially on the day they played the longhorns. The last time TAMU won against Texas was in 2007, and while that game was being played on TV I was in a movie theater watching "No Country For Old Men" on the big screen.
Texas has struggled to reach 5-6 this year, and TAMU is favored by a FG on the road. Nearly all the sports pundits are picking the Aggies to win. USA Today's Weekend Forecast has it 26-21 Aggies, and College Football News says it will be 26-17 for TAMU. Five of the six writers on the Dallas Morning News prediction panel choose the Aggies to win by about 28-17 on average, and even notorious homer Kirk Bohls of the Austin American Statesman says it will probably be a 34-16 Aggie victory.
Since the two Aggie wins in the past decade were upsets, being the favorite is a bad omen. Each year the Aggies typically lose one game they're favored to win, and I don't recall them being favored against Arkansas, Oklahoma State or Missouri. Texas needs a win tonight more than A&M does, and it will make their year if hornfans have a chance to sing "poor Aggies" again.
Added 8:44 pm, same day: I tried watching the game, but when the Aggie return man fumbled the opening kickoff, I knew it wasn't likely I'd be able to see the damned game live. I stuck with it until the first Aggie drive ended in a FG attempt that was wide by roughly half the width of Travis County. If God had intended for me to suffer through Aggie football, he wouldn't have arranged for the invention of DVR technology. The ESPN website says it's 7-7 at halftime, and nothing has happened so far to ease my worried mind. With luck, TAMU will get their stuff together and cruise to a win and I can enjoy the replay tomorrow.
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